Apologies

Stephen Colbert Devotes Entire Show to #CancelColbert Rebuttal

Stephen Colbert introduced a new segment on The Colbert Report last night that was pretty much the only segment he could have done this week: Who’s Attacking Me Now? Campaigns like last week’s #CancelColbert, which reacted to a joke about Asian-Americans taken out of context on Twitter, are bread and butter for actual blowhard conservative talk-show hosts; as a parody of an actual blowhard conservative talk-show host, Colbert had no choice but to embrace it.

It was a joke based on the Washington Redskins that landed him in hot water last week, so, of course, Colbert opened last night’s show decked out in full Redskins gear. (While in a surreal conversation with Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star BD Wong). And because the joke had been tweeted, out of context, by the Comedy Central-run account @ColbertReport, Colbert ended the show by blowing up the offending account—with the help of Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone.

Colbert was careful to lay the blame at the feet of Comedy Central: “When the twit hit the fan, the brain trust over at my network took the tweet down. Because that’s how the Internet works. You just take stuff down, and no one will ever know it happened.” But he also needled activists like #CancelColbert founder Suey Park, who continued the protest even after realizing the offensive tweet was taken out of context. “I understood how people were offended—the same way I, as an Irish American, was offended after reading only one line of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. ‘Eat Irish babies’?! #CancelSwift—trend it!”

If Colbert were an actual conservative talk-show host, he would spend approximately the next six months talking about the controversy, blaming the groupthink of the liberal media for silencing him, and maybe starting a foundation devoted to free speech. Lucky for us, this is probably the last we’ll hear of #CancelColbert.